Lewis Houser and his thirteen-year-old son, Nathan, were hiding behind a toolshed in the tragic state of Missouri. They had been like that for over an hour-waiting-ready to salvage their lives and take what was theirs. "Ground rule number one," Lewis had told Nathan earlier, "is no talking, not even a single word, because the…
I saw my first ghost when I was nine years old, only I didn’t know it was a ghost at the time. This was on the Great Plains, in South Dakota, I think, on our way to the Black Hills. I was with my mother, my three-year-old sister, Lillie, and my new stepfather, Forrest Bender,…
Your television flickers. You're alone, your wife on a week-long visit to friends, so you watch the late news. Tonight is entirely about the Berlin Wall: the Germanies reunite, laughing and weeping Germans chip away at the Wall itself. One has a carpenter's hammer, another a sledge, another a crowbar. The sight pleases you; the…
It was one hundred and seven that June day. The swamp cooler on the roof had lowered the temperature down to the high nineties, and the walls and furniture were damp to the touch. I felt clammy and restless but there was nowhere to go except to the shopping center. My husband had flown to…
The first noises had all been dings, mostly, or thuds, but these new noises were all real rumbles and in the walls. Other numbles had come and gone, but they had been lower down, deeper, beneath her-some midnight demon under the bed that had gone away with warm milk or with tea, a runaway train…
Chapter 19 Two women in the square on market day. One plays a harp, the other, bells. At their feet a sign says, "Deux femmes de 54 ans essayant de gagner leur vie dans la dignité. Bonne journée et merci à vous." At their feet a little basket for money. The albino midget passes offering…
On the last day of our vacation in Paris, I was thinking that it's better to be content at Our Lady of Perpetual Aluminum Siding than to feel disappointment at Notre-Dame Cathedral. John, sitting beside me during the Spanish-language service, held my hand and stared down at the floor. He looked morose because the day…
Each night when Sandra got in from work, she watched the late movie on TV and ate a cold boiled egg with a Coca-Cola, sometimes with sesame crackers if she remembered to bring a few packets from the restaurant where she had been a hostess for the past two weeks. She had been drifting off…
The night Davis and I told our father we wanted a bomb shelter, I sat in silence at the dinner table, listening for sounds from my mother's bedroom. I watched my father butter his bread. I watched Davis sort through his 3-D cards, whose deep focal views-a fisherman with the Hoover Dam behind him, a…
No products in the cart.